How i got my Sprint 6700 for *free*
Ok boys and girls.. THere have been several posts about swapping phones and plans and eBay and whatnot on how to get the beautiful 6700 cheaper than retail price, and to a certain extent, many people have gotten damn fine deals. Well, after reading them, I absolutely had to share with you the story of how i received my ppc-6700 for no charge. Bear with me, as i try to set the mood....
It started in early December with my old phone, a Samsung A680. It's a pretty standard clamshell design camera phone. It was one year old, and the speaker would no longer ring a standard ring or any ringtones. It would only vibrate. Not very good for a phone eh? I decided to replace it after missing so many calls. I proceeded to check out current phones, and was not satisfied with the current crop of "standard" phones which would have ended up costing me $150 to purchase, since i wasn't going to do a new line of service. I checked eBay, and happened upon the trusty ole Hitachi G1000 pda phone. Hmm, nice. pocketpc 2002 and a phone in one unit. Ok, refurb units are all over eBay for about $150. I actually ended up ordering a used one for like $110 or so. It comes in the mail a week or so later. I call up Sprint 800 number and provision it. Cool, i gots me a new pda phone which i am having fun with. Well, not a whole lot of time goes by until i find out that the G1000 would actually hard reset sometimes when i did a soft reset. As you all should know, a hard reset is bad news for a pda if you don't have a backup. It's especially bad for a pda phone, losing all your contacts. After testing it a few days to see if it was a fluke or was regular, i ended up sending that one back to the seller to get it replaced. I activate the old Samsung A680 while i'm waiting for the replacement G1000 to arrive. Another week or so, and i get the replacement G1000. Call the Sprint 800 number again and activate it. Cool, this one is not hard reseting. Everything is right with the world.. Till i try to get on the internet wiht it.. I get the dreaded "USB cable is connected error" during the provisioning phase. 3 OTA provision attempts yield the same result. Ok, i'm not going to clear the battery for 2 days, so i short the pins to drain the internal capacitor. On a cold boot trying to provision it, still errors every time.
Ok, i take it to my local Sprint store for them to do a provision in house and clear the error. After an hour and a half, i come back to pick it up, and they couldn't fix it yet. I leave it there over night as per their recommendations. Next morning, i head over to pick it up. They were unable to fix the error. Oh woe is me. They offer to order me a ppc-6600 for $55. I'm thinking to myself, i don't have insurance on the phone, and here they are, going to get me a 6600 for 55 bones. Well, who am i to turn down an upgrade from 32 megs RAM to 128 RAM as well as some other useful uprades. I kina play the dullard and say "I've only heard bad things about the 6600, like the keyboard breaks easily because it's so flimsy. How about you order me the 6700 instead?" The CSR at the counter says the 6700 is not a model that they can order (i'm laughing internally.. yeah right.. More like you want to sell it in house for commission and profit. Ok, i can wait for a replacement.) She tells me to call her tomorrow to see whether or not they would have the 6600 for me (because the G1000 is obsolete as far as Sprint is concerned).
I call the next day at about 12:45 to talk to the same rep. She says they could not order a 6600 as they no longer have the ability to do so, so they were going to get me an HTC 6700. I'm like "which is the HTC model.. i thought Sprint uses the PPC-6700" Well, she was quite clueless, trying to talk to the real techs in the back to clarify what it was. Again internally, i'm rejoicing. I'm going to get a 6700. whee. I tell her to go ahead and order it, expecting to pay $55 as per what it would have cost me for the 6600. She tells me to call in Tuesday the following week to make sure the new phone is here. Ok, 6 days go by, and i call on Monday, just on a whim. The guy who answers looks up my info and says "Yes, your phone is here." Holy crap. I drive on over to get it. It turns out that they didn't actually *order* me a 6700. They gave me a refurb from the bottom drawer on the floor. It took them about an hour to get together cables and things together to get a box for me and transfer the phone book from the G1000 as they did not have a G1000 cable. I get the 6700 box and inspect it, thinking everything was there. I head on out *without paying the original $55 quote*. I head to work to show off my "new" phone. After fully unpacking the box, i discover that the case is missing, but everything else is there. The headset was the item i most wanted..
I end up ordering a 2 gig miniSD card and a new case off of eBay and should be receiving them next week. But that's not central to the story.
In short, i had my phone upgraded for FREE. This is especially important because i have *never* purchased Sprint phone insurance. Rather than pay $6/month and pay a $35 deductible for a replacement phone, i got the 6700 at NO CHARGE. It might be a refurb and it might have been missing the case, but i can certainly overlook that. Not bad huh? I kinda miss the G1000, but this is a monster in comparison to it.
Next things on the list after the case and miniSD arrive..
purchase:
stylus with pen
high quality screen protectors
load all the damn hacks i can find off of this forum.
Thanks go out to those hackers who have the balls to experiment and discover new uses for such a fine piece of electronic wizardry and the admins of pdaphonehome for running such a fine forum. I hope you enjoyed my experience as much as i have. Now, should i do the Sprint $6/month insurance, or should i look into the Stae Farm PAP insurance? hmm, that merits further study..
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